Some thoughts on Web UI and marketing

Note that I had to link to a blog entry explaining how the SimplyHired’s research salary system works. That’s because the action is cluttered in the interface of the job site. Also look at the page it spits out: it’s very confusing, even if it is more informative. (Which it is, it gives you the median instead of the virtually worthless mean. BTW, the value it spits out is more accurate for this area.)

Finally, notice that the end of the article, written last year, mentions that Indeed.com needs this feature. Well it looks like they’ve done it.

One is better in terms of information delivered and has been out for almost a year now; the other is worse and gets a mention in the Wall Street Journal.

This just goes to show you that if you make the interface simpler, more obvious, and focus on a niche, it’s going to have a lot more traction with people, even if it is a worse product with spurious results.

“They” means both or the just Indeed.com? Because for my area, Indeed’s is way off mark and about 30% higher than PayScale’s (SimplyHired). Also, from the SimplyHired data, you can see that in most jobs, the mean is higher than the median.

BTW, you get more accurate results by being specific. For instance, if I listed “Web Developer” instead of “Software Engineer” (my job title), then the pay is significantly less. Also outliers and engineering managers skew the mean a lot.

For instance, I know this result is about $15k below the going median for this job here, which is much higher than your area.

Referrals are indeed a good way to fill job openings. Check out http://www.yorz.com . The idea they have is that employers can post an opening and advertise a bounty for it. Then anybody can refer somebody for the job, and if it works out, get paid the bounty. An employer can offer a pretty nice bounty and still spend a lot less than they would with a headhunter. Also, here’s a good bit by Joel Spolsky on finding good engineers: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/09/06.html .

While I think the topic of “what’s my [current] salary” is certainly interesting, I’m also interested in the trends of these salaries.

During the period 2003-2005 the difference in base salary between junior engineers at large, public versus small, private, pre-IPO Internet/eCommerce companies, was not much. The difference between senior engineers at the same types of companies could amount to +25-35% and in some cases, much more. Again, I’m only talking base salary and not including bonuses, commissions or stock options.

Today, what I’m seeing (again, in base salary only) is that the junior engineers are getting much higher offers from the small, private Internet/eCommerce companies than from the large, publics. And, the senior engineers at small, privates, have seriously narrowed the gap, and are getting base salary offers much more closely aligned with the large, publics.